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October 2011

To deal with the massive unemployment and economic paralysis of the Great Depression, both the Roosevelt government in the US and Hitler’s government in Germany launched innovative and ambitious programs in 1933. Although Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs helped only marginally, the Third Reich’s much more focused and comprehensive policies proved remarkably successful. Within three years unemployment was banished and Germany’s economy was booming. As Weber explains, this remarkable achievement is little known and rarely acknowledged. He also takes a look at the Third Reich’s economic and taxation policies, and their impact on people’s lives, as well as the ideology and social-economic principles on which they were based.

Alleged anti-Jewish sentiment in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement has raised the issue of the Jewish role in finance and business life. In fact, Jews wield vastly disproportionate power and influence in American business and finance, far more than any other single ethnic-religious group. It’s no exaggeration to say that Jews “control” Wall Street. A recent “debate” by leading Republican presidential candidates underscores the lack of principle and seriousness in the US political process, and an entrenched childishness in American society. The policies of Ronald Regan, like those of Barack Obama, do not match the eloquent rhetoric. The alarmist claim by the Obama administration of a fantastic Iranian plot to assassinate a foreign envoy is part of a dubious scare campaign to justify a new war.

Americans have never been so distrustful of their country’s political leaders and major institutions, or more gloomy about the long-term future. This is much more than unhappiness about the economy and unemployment. Across the US and in Europe, there’s a profound crisis of confidence in the democratic-capitalist system. In the years ahead, American and western European society will continue to disintegrate because the factors behind the decline are still in place, and because the prevailing system operates on the basis of an ideology of egalitarianism, universalism and “diversity” that’s not grounded in historical or social reality.

There seems to be no end to the West’s obsession with Nazism, Hitler and the Third Reich, says prominent British journalist Simon Jenkins. What’s behind this? In spite of decades of hateful propaganda, this fascination seems to grow with time, and millions of people around the world even regard Hitler and the Third Reich positively. The dreaded “anti-Semite” label has been hurled so often and so recklessly in recent times that it’s lost much of its impact. Two American scholars who’ve been viciously smeared as anti-Semites are Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of The Israel Lobby, an important book that shows how this powerful lobby sets US Middle East policy. In the four years since it was published, their point is now widely acknowledged as undeniably true. Gertrude Stein was an influential, “modernistic,” twentieth-century Jewish-American writer. In spite of her background, in 1938 she nominated Hitler for the Nobel Peace Prize.